Education International Research
In order for Ghana to be able to sustainably finance equitable, inclusive, and quality education for all, it must focus on funding and strengthening public systems through domestic resources, stop further privatisation of its education systems, and reject “innovative” funding models from abroad that normalise profit-making and the commercialisation of education.
Coordination International coordination is inadequate; diverse international actors are using this gap to advance their own policy agendas In theory, as the coordinating agency behind SDG 4, UNESCO leads the global efforts to ensure its implementation. In practice, UNESCO’s financial situation makes it vulnerable to influence and pressure from donors. Numerous actors are competing for influence in the education space — and they often have very different approaches to SDG 4, which risks marginalising a rightsbased approach and defence of public quality education. This matters because it is yet to be established what the broad priorities within SDG 4 mean in practice, such as quality education or relevant learning. The question is to what extent players in the global education landscape promote the full scope of SDG 4. For example, the World Bank, as the largest funder of education in low-income countries, has a long history of undermining public education, and its private sector arm continues to invest in feecharging and profit-making education providers. The Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) programme directly discourages governments from regulating education, setting standards for private schools or limiting private actors and education fees. Recently, the World Bank has attempted to take on more of a leadership role at the policy level. In 2018, for the first time ever the World Development Report26 was devoted to education, and later that year the World Bank launched the Human Capital Index,27 based in part on learning outcomes, while ostensibly encouraging member states to invest more in education. Both of these initiatives promote an instrumentalist view of education, in which its importance is viewed solely through the lens of the economic growth that it yields, despite the World Bank peppering its discourse with occasional references to SDG 4.
GRO.EI-IE
Alongside multilateral institutions, a range of private actors are emerging under the banner of implementation of SDG 4, such as the aforementioned Education Commission and its initiatives, or the Varkey Foundation and its annual Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF),28 a high-level gathering of actors in education promoted as a celebration of the teaching profession. The Varkey Foundation is the philanthropic branch of Dubai-based GEMS Education, the world’s largest forprofit private school system. Though fairly new on the scene, their de facto convening power seems to be far greater than that of UNESCO, which struggled to get Ministers of Education to attend its high-level Global Education Meeting in 2018, specifically aimed at measuring SDG 4 progress. Implementation and governance of SDG 4 should be member state–led. Yet many member states are pushing to give the private sector a greater role, eagerly calling for PPPs and private investments. Even though states are the duty bearers responsible for guaranteeing and providing access to education, the GPE is currently discussing whether it should also fund private providers. As long as governments continue to shy away from their responsibility, the scope and rights-based nature of SDG 4 will remain under threat.
0302 NOITA CUDE
26 See: http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 27 See: http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/human-capital 28 See: https://www.educationandskillsforum.org/
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